Data from the recent Vietnam Consumer Payment Attitude Survey conducted by Visa (VisaNet data from January to June 2020 compared to January to June 2019) showed that currently 37 percent Vietnamese consumers were using contactless card payments. For contactless card payment users, 85 percent of people said that they often used this payment method at least once a week.
Visa also said that with this paying method, consumers could touch to pay at any cashier with a contactless payment icon without giving the card to the cashier. Contactless payments were secured by powerful EMV(R) Chip technology. Contactless cards had a small antenna head that could be read by a point of sale (POS) card reader within a maximum of 4cm. During the payment process, the card never left the cardholder’s hand, and payment was made extremely quickly, as it only took less than half a second for a POS card reader to read a card or a contactless device. Customers could even use mobile phones, enter PINs, passwords or biometrics for added security.
This new payment technology benefited both consumers and merchants. Thanks to the fast speed of this payment method, consumers could minimise waiting time and control transactions better because the card always in the hands of users. Card accepting units took advantages from serving more customers, cutting down on cash handling costs, thereby providing a better payment experience for consumers. This was particularly useful in the context of COVID-19 being widespread globally and re-emerging in Vietnam.
Dang Tuyet Dung, director of Vietnam and Laos Visa, said that when Vietnam’s economy was continually evolving, faster and smarter payment methods were becoming increasingly necessary. Contactless technology would pave the way for Vietnamese to meet this growing market demand.
Recording general growth data, thanks to technological breakthroughs and the degree of changing habits in using payment methods of users, Visa contactless transactions in the first six months of 2020 had increased by more than 500 percent compared to that period of 2019. Total contactless value of Visa grew by more than 600 percent in the same period. These record numbers were forecast to continue to be retained and reset many records in the coming period, given that more and more organisations were increasingly equipped with contactless payment card readers to serve safe payment method in the epidemic, as well as to catch the state-of-the-art technology in the world.
